this constant attempt to figure out how to manage people who's work you don't understand has, in my org, resulted in constant reorgs, endless search for the next big thing in management craftiness.
the latest is to have people sit out in the open at a giant table, 5-10 around it. all of this is done under the banner of Cewbicle Liberation! Get out of the Cewb! Get with your mates! So much more fun to program this way! Turn around in your chair and talk to your mate. No need to get up and walk to her desk. No need to IM! Ain't it grand!
*rolls eyes*
I'm not saying life is stunningly cushy in academia, but at least when I was there, there wasn't anything at all close to this kind of surveillance from your boss, let alone from the continuous quality improvement bulldada which is, basically, designed to ensure that people police each other so your manager doesn't have to because managers absolutely HATE policing employees. People in white collar supervisory positions, middle management, the people in charge of 1-6 direct reports with no one reporting below them. They can't stand disciplining employees and will do everything in the world to avoid it, including embracing all manner of ways to get employees to police themselves.
catherine wrote: <> As someone who has definitely worked "within and without" I have found <> academia to be far less stifling, more intellectually alive, and more <> collegial. I'll take it over working in a shop, a bank, cleaning <> houses, marketing, or anything else I've done any time of the day <> anywhere. I even say this in a situation where mounting union action <> and public protest over my employer's intention to cut jobs seems to <> me not only justified but crucial. The conditions under which I work <> in general (at an industrial level) are spectacularly good compared to <> anything else I can imagine. I'm not saying I don't know lines of work <> where I'd get paid more but precisely because it is all of those <> things above I couldn't care about that at all.